Posted on 10/04/2009 12:13:44 PM PDT by Josh Painter
Sarah Palin enjoys considerable support among libertarian Republicans, and many libertarian independents are giving her a second look. Adam Brickley believes that the Sarah Palin John McCain scooped up out of Alaska to be his running mate was much more libertarian than the vice presidential candidate who had to support McCain's policy positions on the stump. What we are seeing now, says Brickley, is "more of the original, pre-McCain Sarah Palin":
"A lot has been said lately about the idea that Sarah Palin is positioning herself as a the libertarian in the 2012 field... This is exactly I have been saying for months, and exactly how I have seen a potential Palin run shaping up for years (VP run or no VP run)."Will Sarah Palin be able to bring libertarians and conservatives together to start rebuilding the coaltion that Ronald Reagan led to win two successive lopsided presidential election victories?
"So – that is my view of the brave new world of “Sarahtarianism” – which is really nothing more than the classic Sarah Palin finally emerging on the national stage. We’ll see just how libertarian she can get when we see her upcoming memoir Going Rogue, but I’m guessing that she will use that book to complete the transformation we’ve all been talking about."Some libertarians are still not comfortable with Palin, largely due to a perception that she is too close to the neoconservatives, as Phil Manger observed in an op-ed that was mostly supportive of the former governor:
"She was accompanied to Hong Kong by Randy Scheunemann, a foreign policy advisor to John McCain and advisor to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Scheunemann was also president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization that beat the drums for the Iraq invasion. Palin's pre-McCain-campaign views on Iraq were not very clear, although I got the impression she was harboring some doubts. I worry that she might be taken over and 'managed' by neocons, like she was during the campaign."But it was in that same Hong Kong speech that Sarah Palin said some things which should go a long way to allay such fears, according to Allen Caeden:
"Sarah Palin deliberately took numerous swipes at neo-conservatism in her Hong Kong speech. She gave the finger to George Bush’s 'compassionate conservatism' by using the term 'common-sense conservative' to describe herself, and she flat out rejected the golden egg of neo-conservatism which is to spread democracy around the world; she stated unequivocally that this is not the job of the United States. This was two fingers held up at once; one to George Bush and the other to the neo-conservatives in the Beltway."Her exact words were:
"I am not talking about some U.S.-led 'democracy crusade.' We cannot impose our values on other counties. Nor should we seek to. But the ideas of freedom, liberty and respect for human rights are not U.S. ideas, they are much more than that."Sarah's publisher promises that in her forthcoming book Going Rogue, she will present "her vision for an America that is strong, independent, and free." Reagan conservatives and libertarians alike are waiting to see if that vision resonates in both camps. We're betting that it will.
- JP
Do nothing about anything ever, which is the core Libertine dogma, is not one that will ever win elections in the real world. It is a doctrine for comfortably middle class self absorbed single males, not serious adult minds.
It should be noted that she diverges from the “Neocons” on domestic and social issues. Her foreign policy is pro-freedom, “hawkish” (in the good sense), anti-Putin, anti-terrorist and would be called by some “Neocon”. That’s a good thing. If there was something right about “Neocons” it’s foreign policy. She’s no isolationist, non-interventionist paleo.
Just to avoid confusion over where she stands.
Correct. If she was to run as anything other than Republican it would definately not be Libertairan. Too many little boney critters in that closet. If anyting a new party based on conservatism but I feel she is the kind of person who can take the Republican party away from the Rinos just as she did in Alaska. Bold colors!
The term “neocons” seem to convey the image of liberal RINOs who seek and expanded federal govt. Anyone else see the similarity?
A lot of people would question that, and not just "isolationist, non-interventionist paleos."
They made some really serious miscalculations that hurt the country.
One reason not to get so enthusiastic about Palin is that, like Bush, she'd simply defer to the neocons on foreign policy.
Maybe if they really irritate her (and "they" is a confusing term here since the people who write about foreign policy and those who deal with domestic policy and social issues aren't the same people), that won't happen, but I wouldn't count on it.
Republicans are not doing anyone a favor by piling on with Demoncrats to trash Sarah Palin.
They don't because like Marxism, it is a ivory tower sort of ideology that can only work because it's adherents are protected by the very system they decry from ever having to actually live up to their self proclaimed dogmas.
She’s closer the the Founding Father’s principles than anything we’ve seen in decades in this country.
She is not a libertarian. She is a (small-ell) libertarian conservative. The differnces are significant - libertarian conservatives believe in small government, low taxes and fiscal responsibilty, as do Libertarians. But libertarian conservatives believe there should be some limits of personal liberties - they don’t support legalizing drugs, gay marriage, and some of the other more liberal social policies that many Libertarians do.
Libertarian conservatives also don’t support foreign policy adventurism, but they do believe in a strong defense and even taking proactive steps when real threats to the U.S. present themselves.
- JP
Hooah!
“Neocon” means a lot of things. On foreign policy it has come to mean pro-Israel, anti-Cremlin, anti-terrorist, pro-freedom (in the sense of aiding opponents of our enemies) and if needed unilateral US action.
This is also where Palin stands. One could also call it common sense, strong US foreign and defense policy.
Domestically the “Neocons” are indeed Democrat-lite RINOs ala Giuliani, Romney, Frum etc.
This of course is were she stands opposed to it.
You sure you don’t have that backwards? I’m all for the small government fiscal responsibility and low taxes, but also believe that with that comes freedom and personal responsibility, unlike the social conservatives who think the government ought to be our nanny.
I’ve been self-identifying as a small-l libertarian conservative for years now.
The term “neoconservatism” was coined by and adopted by former liberals who felt like they had been “mugged” by Islamic fascism.
Led by the late Irving Kristol, they remained liberal on social issues and had no problems at all with the growth of the federal government or with big spending.
“Neoconservatives” was a poor choice of a label for what essentially were hawkish liberals. They had much more in common with LBJ than with Ronald Reagan.
- JP
That President in question was Ronald Reagan.
The GOP still hasn’t closed its primaries.
Democrats will have say in the party’s nominee...again.
Virtually no one in the GOP has done anything to oppose 0bama, aside from Sarah Palin.
If the GOP nominates McCain, Romney, Gomer Pyle, or Guilianni again, I will not support it or them at all.
I will also not support Pawlenty as he believes in global warming and did not stand up against the fraudulent election of Franken.
I would support John Bolton,
And Sarah Palin.
That is all.
Reagan also had a Democrat Congress he was forced to work with, and the only way he could get anything he wanted, especially the military buildup and spending cuts the country needed at the time, was to deal with Tip O’Neil.
- JP
Bill Kristol is generally considered to be a neocon, does not take the positions you mention, and was one of Palin’s earliest backers.
The GOP types who oppose her tend to be the ones called ‘crunchy cons’ for some reason.
The common ground between Kristol, Scheunemann and Palin is primarily on foreign policy, which is IMO a good thing.
A few days ago I downloaded The Betrayal of the American Right by Murray Rothbard from the Online Library of Liberty, which contains this paragraph from the 1991 preface:
At the present time, many conservatives have come to realize that the old feisty, antigovernment spirit of conservatives has been abraded and somehow been transformed into its statist opposite. It is tempting, and, so far as it goes, certainly correct, to put the blame on the Right's embrace of the 1970's of Truman-Humphrey Cold War liberals calling themselves "neoconservatives," and to allow these ex-Trotskyites and ex-Menscheviks not only into the tent but also to take over the show.Now, Rothbard was a hard-core libertarian, but I think this observation has the ring of truth. Rothbard places the ultimate cause of the takeover of conservativism by the neocons to the founding of National Review, a position which I think is guaranteed to start an argument around here.
But it's also true, if not a truism that in order to understand where we are it's important to understand where we've come from.
that made no sense at all. Libertarians don’t win because they present an unpopular vision of politics. How can you possibly be elected if you are saying that you aren’t going to give people things? Liberty doesn’t sell. Many Republicans shout about limited government, but can’t spit out a coherent sentence about why it should be limited. It’s really pretty simple on one level: the government should do those things it can do more efficiently than the market, and leave everything else alone. The parallel to Marxism doesn’t exist.
“Crunchy cons” are also known as “Granola conservatives.” Led by Rod Dreher, they are environmentalists who are mostly socially conservative, but oppose aspects of free market capitalism.
I think of them as former hippies who smoked too much dope and are hallucinating that they really are conservatives.
These people *really* hate Sarah Palin, probably because they are elitists while she is not.
- JP
As a former YAFer I remember the anti-war anti-Reagan draftcard burning Rothbard-led semi-riot at the 1969 YAF convention.
Too self absorbed and arrogant self righteous to actually do the hard work required of managing a functioning Government or being part of a serious political movement, it easier for Libertarians to simply cling to an ideology that is so fundamentally unworkable in the real world that it will never be implemented,. Thus they can cling to their childish notions of "The only good Govt is no Govt" without ever having to live by the systems they postulate.
Thus they can sit on their butts do nothing and whine about how everyone else is doing it wrong with out ever having to do the hard work of coming up with real world solutions to real world problems.
Perfect ideology for self absorbed comfortably middle class males with no responsibilities to anything but their own egos.
Yah. Rothbard had a dalliance with leftism in the 60’s. He subsequently figured it (or them) out.
To post 16 - You’ve omitted how many times were taxes cut during Reagan’s Presidency and by how much. So, does this, or not, make him a significant net reducer of taxes?
The problem is that cafeteria conservatism, just like cafeteria christianity, is a fallacy. You can’t just pick and choose the aspects of conservatism that fit your liefestyle and reject the rest. You either go the whole ten yards or the other side gets the ball.
A conservative belives in:
1. national security
2. fiscal restraint
3. smaller government
4. traditional values
Anyone who refuses to accept all four of those principles isn’t a conservative in my book.
- JP
On the other hand, both genuine Burkean conservatives and genuine J S Mill liberals can support a position of "We don't want bigger government, we want a government that does a few big things and does them right!”
The "Libertines" of your fantasies, if they have to make a choice between big government and big government, they will go for the one that allows personal freedom.
But they would, like actual libertarians, and genuine conservatives, prefer a government not big enough to control everything.
I’m not one to pay much attention to nuances, but I have to agree on the capital (L) libertarian, like capital (D) far leftists both are after their own version of Utopia that can never exist. There has to be federal governance if we’re going to be united States that look after the broader issues. However, hitting the stopping place of proactive central governance rather than central control needs to, at some point, be highly defined.
Personally, I think Sarah Palin is a true conservative Republican and has no time whatsoever for the RINO doctrine. Governance for federal issues and leave the issues of personal lives to the states. I also think that she, like Reagan would not hesitate to stare down the country’s enemies with a strong defense that protects our freedoms. I think she would’ve poured the support into Afghanistan that is needed to get the job done and clean it out. Just like we should’ve done in Iraq instead of piddle footing around for so long before the surge.
Frankly I think the RINO’s were wrong in not being up front with an intention of establishing peace keeping bases in both countries, like we’ve done every country that we’ve assisted to liberate themselves. Neither of these countries has the ability or capacity to continue to fight off the extremist rabid dogs all by themselves.
Thomas Hobbes "During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man." [Leviathan, pt. 1, ch. 13]
Thomas Hobbes "[In a state of nature] No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
Which is why I’m a “recovering Libertarian.”
The LP is way too concerned with intellectual purity and way too unconcerned with actually winning elections. It took me a few years in the work force after I graduated from college to figure that out. Then I switched (back) to being a Republican.
Just because “that government is best which governs least” it does not necessarily follow that no government all is a good idea—at least when you’re talking about imperfect, corruptable human beings.
I do think we need to re-open the whole issue of what America’s involvement in the world should be. It’s obvious we can’t go back to the “no entangling alliances” of the Founding Fathers, but I also don’t think we can forever afford or sustain being the world’s only trustworthy policeman, either.
I’m 100% behind an overwhelmingly strong national defense, I still tend to think that the Iraq War was on balance a good idea, and I’d like to see us go after the Taliban and Al Quada much more vigorously (if not ruthlessly) than we have. I think we need to drastically upgrade our human intelligence all around the world.
On the other hand, I’m starting to think that NATO is an idea whose time has come and gone. But I don’t know if the Europeans have the moxie to defend themselves any more. Maybe we should start sending them the bill.
We need to get energy independence ASAP in order to cut our dependencies to the cesspool which is the Middle East.
I think the future for the U.S. is a stable system of trade and security around the Pacific Rim, extending to India, and to South America rather than focused on Europe and the Middle East, which have been our obsessions until now.
I think the rumors of the demise of the U.S. as a superpower are greatly exaggerated—IF we can turn back the Democrats in 2010 and turn out Obama in 2012.
(Dang, I’m wordy today!)
The preamble of the Libertarian platform. Libertarianism is anarchism with a smiley face painted on it.
Which is exactly the kind of rigid ideological test that makes the Libertarians a permanent fringe party.
What I think we need to do is find the lowest common denominator that can build a majority coalition of people who will certainly not agree on everything on your cafeteria list.
My own view is that lowest common denominator is personal liberty combined with personal responsibility. I think the four items in your list are products of that common denominator rather than prior requirements to join the coalition.
As long as you’re voting against Democrats and for electable people who advocate more freedom and personal responsibility, I don’t care too much about why you’re doing it.
Reagan also had to practically rebuild the U.s. armed forces from scratch.
As a result of Carter ‘s policies, our American military was plagued by low morale, low pay, obsolete weaponry and nearly zero maintenance on what hard assets we did have. Key military personnel (Lt’s and Sgt’s) were not reenlisting, and thousands of enlisted men’s families were on food stamps.
Afterthe Vietnam War, the defense industry was much as it had been since World War II. Stores of weapons had been depleted by the war and not replaced. The derfense industry was beginning to develop new technologies such as stealth and two fighter aircraft that would become the finest in the world, the F-15 and the F-16.
Reagan brought such programs back to life with an infusion of cash. Defense peaked at $456.5 billion in 1987 (in projected 2005 dollars), compared with $325.1 billion in 1980 and $339.6 million in 1981. Most of the increase was for procurement and R&D. The procurement budget doubled to $147.3 billion from $71.2 billion.
The liberals were kicking and screaming all the while.
- JP
There’s Libertarians (capital L) and libertarians (little l).
If you’ve read what I’ve posted elsewhere on FR today you will have read that I don’t believe that anarchism will ever work because we are all flawed human beings.
I’m trying to agree with you, MNJohnnie, if only you’ll let me!
No, the four principles are in no way requirements to join a coalition. They are my own opinion of requirements to call one’s self a conservative.
Reagan’s coalition had libertarians in it who didn’t ascribe to the traditional values principle and Democrats who weren’t that worried about the size of government. But they were all weary of the Carter presidency and suffering from a misery index that was way too high.
- JP
Sarah can win as a conservative Republican who believes government’s primary role is to preserve liberty and allow free people to prosper with as little hindrance from government as possible. She will go nowhere as a Libertarian. I know the left is desperate to split the Republican Party before 2012, and run an independent, Perot style, but beating Obama is too important a political goal for conservatives and Libertarians to allow that to happen. The only split I want to see happen is having pro American Democrats break from the NeoCom Bolsheviks that have taken over their party. Sarah is smart enough to know that the majority of Republicans are not of McCain’s ilk. Getting swept up in the myth of the Demopub/Republicrat, all party politics are the same nonsense is not something Sarah should do.
Why? Doesn't Sarah support legalizing drugs for all the freakin' potheads?
Actually, I believe the piling on by the mean spirited RINOs strengthens Sarah Palin's appeal with real America. A Republican candidate who isn't liked by the people who screwed up this country has a helluva lot to offer, imo.
Nobody said Reagan was a libertarian. However, he recognized how crucial libertarians were and how much influence they had on conservatives. Think of libertarianism as the skeleton of a human body, and conservatism the muscle.
Palin is not going to go around and foam at the mouth on the drug war, porn, pot, etc. Reducing the size and scope of government and fighting wars only when necessary are issues that libertarians and conservatives can agree with.
Do you want to win or not?
And that is precisely why the communist left and the global communist RINOs are teaming up to trash her.
Sarah is on the side of We the People; they are not.
Again Johnnie, you are not understanding the context of the thread.
Nobody is talking about Libertarianism, the Libertarian Party, or the stereotypes and misconceptions that are associated with Libertarianism.
The coalition that propelled Reagan to two landslides were a mixture of social conservatives, fiscal and small-gov't conservatives (i.e. libertarians) and national security hawks.
All Palin is doing is reuniting that coalition.
The LP has absolutely nothing to do with what Governor Palin is trying to accomplish.
It is truly stunning to see so many “conservatives” rally around Sarah Palin for her speeches. Her record as a conservative is spotted with pet boondoggle projects and quitting her governorship early. Admittedly, she gives good speeches and says things our Republican leaders don’t have the cajones to say, but that doesn’t make her the equivalent of Reagan. Reagan had a long career of fighting for conservatism before he became governor of a state with an economy that rivals most nations, and he didn’t quit early. As for Sarah Palin giving neo-cons the finger...she’s apparently taking foreign policy advice from Trent Lott and John McCain’s foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunenemann. So much for that theory. Sarah Palin is good at what she’s done lately - speak, but criminy, let’s keep it in perspective. I reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks if she throws McCain under the bus in “Going Rogue,” though.
yes, you are correct. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Happens a lot when libertarianism is brought up on FR.
That is perfectly in line with Adam Smith's view in The Wealth of Nations of the proper functions of government in a capitalist society.
Unfortunately, over the past couple of decades, the RINOs have sold their economic souls to the ghosts of David Ricardo, the hypocrite who preached Free Trade, all the while manipulating markets to enrich himself and buy himself a seat in Parliament. His policies devastated the British economy for much of the 1800s, and now the US economy is plunging toward the abyss for exactly the same reasons.
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